Four decades after he first bid farewell to his alma mater, William C. “Bill” Gordon is saying goodbye for a second time.

After earning his undergraduate and graduate degrees in psychology from Wake Forest, Gordon (’68, MA ’70) moved west to find his fame, if not his fortune, at the University of New Mexico. Following a distinguished career there – including four years as president – he returned to Wake Forest as provost in 2002.

He stepped down from that position in 2007 and began teaching in the psychology department. He is retiring this summer as professor of psychology, but he plans to remain active in higher education.

Gordon at Commencement in 2007.

“Having an opportunity to return to my alma mater, which had such an influence on my formation as a person and on my career, has been very satisfying to me personally,” Gordon said recently. “It gave me a chance to give something back to a place that has given so much to me.”

Gordon says he’s grateful to have worked alongside “truly exceptional and supportive colleagues” in the psychology department and with outstanding students. “Without any doubt, what I will miss the most is being able to teach and mentor my students,” he says. “It is easy to begin to take for granted just how bright, dedicated and engaged our students are, and what a joy it is to work with them and to see them grow.”

Students said they will remember Gordon’s commitment and dedication to helping them become stronger researchers and prepare for graduate school and careers in psychology. Rising senior Thomas Hopkins had Gordon for only one class, but said he’s been as influential as any teacher he’s ever had. “He made me better as a student and as an individual,” he said.

A native of Rome, Ga., Gordon was business manager of the Old Gold and Black and Student Government treasurer when he was an undergraduate. He earned his Ph.D. in experimental psychology at Rutgers University and taught for five years at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He joined the University of New Mexico faculty in 1978 and served as psychology department chair, dean and provost before being named president in 1999. He and his wife, Kathy, have four children.

Gordon has lunch with student Douglas Hutton in the Pit in 2003.

He arrived at Wake Forest highly regarded for his commitment to the teacher-scholar ideal and Wake Forest’s liberal arts tradition. He served as acting president for five months in late 2003 and early 2004 while President Thomas K. Hearn Jr. was being treated for a brain tumor.

As a teacher, Gordon took a personal interest in his students and was always eager to share advice; his “commitment and caring for his students was plainly evident, said rising senior Catherine Mewborn. “I thought that I knew so much about research and writing, but I learned and improved so much more than I could have imagined. The time and effort he put into helping us develop are the markings of a great teacher.”

Carrie Jacquett, also a rising senior, described Gordon as “probably the wisest man I’ve ever met.” Among other things, Jacquett said Gordon worked with students individually to help them improve their presentation skills to share their research. “I learned that there is an art to presenting, and that it isn’t just saying words. I know that the skills of writing and presenting that I learned in his class will take me far,” she said.

Graduation is a time for celebration and nostalgia, and Wake Forest’s annual Senior Dinner has proven to be a favorite occasion for both. In late April members of the Class of 2012, who graduate May 21, raised their glasses to honor each other and their soon-to-be alma mater.

Four seniors offered toasts at the event, which has become a popular tradition sponsored by the Office of Campus Life and Leadership. Any member of the class can nominate themselves and/or a friend to deliver their toast before a panel, which then selects four students to present at the dinner.

Seniors Kristen Bryant, Keaton Lee, Meredith-Leigh Pleasants and Hamlin Wade made toasts, sharing reflections on their undergraduate career. Following are excerpts from their toasts. You can read the full text here.

“Poetically Correct” by Kristen Bryant

There are only so many times one can hear “memories” and “bittersweet” before our sentimental classmates begin to weep and our cynical brethren start to groan so I would rather just set the tone of my toast by saying: We have come so far: my how we’ve grown. Just take a second. Close your eyes and think of yourself freshman year. The major you thought you would have, the friends you thought you would keep, all the problems you thought were titanic, the little things that sent you into a panic. Now open your eyes and look who is around you. I think we should all say Thank You. Who wudda thunk we would all end up here. Raising our glasses and pushing back tears. Who could’ve foreseen all the places we’ve seen from Vietnam to Senegal to everywhere in between. According to the Mayans the world’s ending this year. You know what I say, Bring it on! I have no fear because if I survived Wake Forest I am quite positive I can survive an apocalypse. To the Class of 2012, let us begin our prolonged goodbye. Cherishing each moment that will soon be images in our past. Never forgetting that we are one special class. As we hit the ground running, leaving our alma mater in the dust, let’s toast to the future … to us!

“Senior Toast” by Keaton Lee

As we reflect upon the past, I think it’s appropriate to think about the often forgotten second verse of our fight song. After all, I think it almost perfectly captures our college experience and our thoughts right now:

“As frosh we adored her,

As sophs we explored her,

And carved our names upon her ancient walls.

As juniors patrol her,

As seniors extol her,

And weep fore’er to leave her sacred halls.”

Now please don’t start crying, cause then I’m going to start crying and it’s just going to be a huge disaster. In fact, I would encourage us to do the exact opposite. We shouldn’t weep. We shouldn’t be sad. We should be the happiest we have ever been in our entire lives. We have accomplished so much more than we even realize, and we’re not about to stop now. We have changed each other’s lives, and soon, we will take that enormous step outside of the bubble and into the real world. Remember where you’ve come from, and using everything that you’ve learned both inside and outside of the Wake Forest classroom, never pursue your dream with anything other than your utmost dedication and deepest passion. As my dear friend said: “Departure. Arrival. Transition. With your best foot forward, walk on, heads held high and hearts full of joy, tempered by an indelible nostalgia.” And so, as spirits are high and opportunity is among us, I invite you to raise your glass. To ladies, and to gentlemen. To the future doctors, lawyers, businesspeople, and artists. To politicians. To poets. To academics, and to athletes. To our brave soldiers, and to the dedicated educators. To brotherhood, and to sisterhood. To bravery through adversity. To the pursuit of maturity. To achievement, and to understanding. To faith and to passion. To our never-ending dedication to one another. To hope, and to strength. To surpassed expectations. To success, punctuated by moments of observation and reflection. To you. To Old, to Gold, and to Black. To this, the finest class, in a class of its own. To the class of 2012.

“Senior Toast” by Meredith-Leigh Pleasants

“Live in fragments no longer, connect.” When we came to Wake Forest, this quote adorned the back of our orientation t-shirts. Most of us probably can’t squeeze into that tiny shirt any longer or don’t even remember that t-shirt at all. But despite the shirt shrinking and disappearing, the message has grown with us. Much of our college experience and connection has been shaped by social media. When we came to Wake many of us joined the class of 2012 Facebook group and frantically searched for our unknown roommates, suitemates, and future classmates. Over the years we win-stalked hookups (don’t act like you haven’t), we mentioned our most guilty accomplices and hashtagged our biggest embarrassments. But looking back at college, my greatest connections weren’t made on my Timeline. They were found while swaying at shag on the mag with my best friends, during initiation into my sorority, while in rolling the quad, and sledding on Davis field when it snowed. They were made during that glorious moment when we beat Duke to secure our spot as #1 in the nation, and in the chilly moments waiting for the light to pass during Lighting of the Quad. They are in moments that defined me. Each of us carry our moments, like photos on our wall that remind us of the good times we shared and the hard times we survived. I don’t think I could post or even take an Instagram photo that could truly capture the beauty of Wait Chapel on a sunny spring day or the feeling of returning to Wake Forest’s gates after a long summer or semester travelling abroad, that feeling of coming home to our beloved campus. We came to Wake Forest as fragments, some homesick, some sick of home and desperate for independence. We found best friends and ourselves at Mother, so Dear. Although, our next adventure is exciting and unknown, we carry with us these moments, these friends, and the spirit of Wake Forest that will connect us for a lifetime.

“Senior Toast” by Hamlin Wade

To give a proper toast, one must know who is to be toasted. Tonight, it seems as though there are several possibilities that emerge as potential subjects. Of course, we could raise a glass to our alma mater, Wake Forest. We could extol her for the opportunities that she has provided and marvel at the wondrous experiences which we have lived and re-lived over the last four years of our collegiate days. Or, perhaps we could echo in a chorus of cheers to our professors and supervisors, the individuals that have molded us during some of the most formative years of our young lives. As we walk off of this campus and into the next chapters of our life stories, it is certain that we will have these mentors to thank for our successes. They have raised us and nurtured us. They have challenged us to try new things and to push the limits in leadership and research. However, there is yet a third potential subject that is worthy of our praise this evening, that being every last one of us, the Class of 2012. After all, we are the backbone of this institution which we have come to call home. We provided the hands and feet which our campus embraced. We provided the minds and souls and spirits with which our professors, staff members and administrators interacted. We provided the strength and the passion and the dedication which has made Wake Forest such a magnificent place in which to learn. Tonight is a night to remember our time here at our Mother, so dear. Tonight is a time to reflect on where we came from and dream of where we will one day go. We have weathered the ups and downs, the good days and the bad and we have been changed for the better. We have made friendships that will last a lifetime and we have developed into the future leaders of our world. So, please join me in raising a glass to us. As we disperse across the state, the country and the world, let us always remember that we will have nights like these — moments framed in our memories forever. And let us remember that no matter where we go from here, we will always and forever be bound together as Demon Deacons from the Class of 2012.

During the many years I worked with the inimitable Dr. Paul Orser (’69, P ’01), two qualities in particular distinguished him to me.

The first was his absolutely wicked sense of humor; the second, his unwavering commitment to the success of students, alumni and his undergraduate alma mater, Wake Forest.

As to the first, I will never forget a certain phone call. Paul didn’t exactly embrace new technology, preferring instead the old-fashioned ways of communicating — by phone, or even better, face-to-face (as this improved the opportunities for body language.)

I can’t remember what he called about; I just remember he began the conversation by speaking in a thick Irish brogue. Once I righted myself in my chair and dabbed the tears of laughter, I realized it was St. Patrick’s Day. That was Paul. He was the “Reynolda Hallmark” of humor: blessed with the gift of wit for any situation or occasion.

As to the second distinction, his devotion to duty was exemplary as teacher, administrator, Dean of Freshmen and ultimately Associate Dean for Student Academic Initiatives. He could not take more seriously his job to teach, advise, encourage and — when the occasion called for it — deliver a wake-up call to a struggling student or a reassuring message to a concerned parent. An academic at heart with an undergraduate degree in biology and advanced degrees from Emory University, he believed mentoring was the high calling of every professor.

At Wake Forest Paul worked tirelessly to improve the first-year student’s experience by enhancing freshman orientation and shepherding the first-year seminar program into reality. His admiration for the institution was apparent as he advanced Wake Forest’s reputation in the nation’s capital, forging connections that ultimately resulted in the Wake Washington program that gives students the opportunity to spend a semester internship in Washington, D.C.

With his retirement this spring, the Reynolda Campus community will be absent a daily dose of wit and wisdom from a true Deacon — a gentleman who valued character and integrity above most anything else, with the possible exception of friendship.

He’d been known to partake of regular meals at K&W, but it wasn’t the food he enjoyed as much as the jolly camaraderie of his friends. “Friends are a cherished gift,” he said, during his “Last Lecture” delivered in April. “Nurture your friendships. On this universally acknowledged beautiful campus, look up, smile, and greet one another and especially greet strangers.”

My sense is that Paul never knew a stranger and that he has nurtured countless friendships with students, graduates, families and friends like me. No doubt these relationships will influence Wake Forest for years to come.

Relish retirement, my friend. And call me on St. Patrick’s Day.

Lynn Hamilton Ellis (’75, P ’02, ’05) wrote Wake Forest Magazine to tell us she just published a book about her late husband Mark Ellis (’74, MD ’77) that is an inspirational true story, much of which takes place at the University.

The book is entitled, “The Humanity of Medicine: The Story of Mark E. Ellis, MD,” and she says it chronicles his extraordinary journey from boyhood to manhood and cancer patient to cancer doctor.

From the book’s summary: “Diagnosed in 1968 at the age of eighteen with a cancerous brain tumor, Mark Ellis was detoured to a life that is not part of any college student’s agenda. His freshman orientation week at Wake Forest University would end with a brain operation and a terminal prognosis. Somehow he would defy the odds, survive five years of intense experimental chemotherapy, beat his diagnosis, and live to become a most beloved and visionary cancer physician.

“This dramatic narration of his life including his childhood, his education, his love of music, his family, his romance, and his illness is a true story that is an inspiring recount of how one man made a difference.  You will laugh, you will cry, you will question coincidence, and you will be in awe of his resolve, inspired by his life, and encouraged to follow your own dreams, regardless of the obstacles you face.”

“Mark and I met at Wake Forest, actually in Dr. Fred Horton’s New Testament class in 1973,” Lynn writes. “(Dr. Horton and many other Wake Forest folks graciously gave permission to appear in the book, and indeed they do). At that time he was finishing his fourth year of chemotherapy, and he was headed to med school at Bowman Gray. He told me his incredible story on our first date, and from that time on I have always wanted to write it down.

“Over the years, of course, his infectiously inspirational story grew as he not only beat his terminal diagnosis, but went on to become a beloved and visionary cancer physician who touched the lives of thousands of cancer patients. Little did we know, back in 1973, that we would not only marry and spend our careers working together, but that we would also have three children who would all grow up to graduate from Wake Forest (Lisa and Robert, ’05) and Mark Jr. (02).”

Lynn planned to possibly publish his story as a book, perhaps upon his retirement; however her husband passed away due to cancer in 2010.  “In keeping with his lifelong philosophy that he borrowed from the Beatles, I am taking a sad song and making it better by donating all of my royalties to various cancer care organizations; a major recipient of those royalties is the Wake Forest University Medical School,” she writes.

The book is available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon in paperback and kindle eBook.

The two 1930s steamer trunks — “big enough to stow a body,” in the words of Sally Stallings — sat undisturbed for decades. After her mother’s death nine years ago, Stallings hauled the trunks to her home in Fresno, Calif., and stashed them in a far corner of her basement.

Two years ago, she decided it was time to discover what secrets the trunks held. The trunks had belonged to her father, the prominent novelist, playwright and screenwriter Laurence Stallings (1916) and had been sealed since his death in 1968.

Using a screwdriver to pry open the rusted latches, Stallings said she felt like Howard Carter discovering King Tut’s tomb. When she finally pried open the trunks, she discovered something more valuable to her than gold: a missing part of her past.

What she found compelled her down the road 100 years into her father’s and Wake Forest’s past and then back again when her father and his alma mater were reunited. Her journey ended at Wake Forest in March when she accepted the citation for Laurence Stallings’ induction into the new Wake Forest Writers Hall of Fame. “My father loved Wake Forest,” she says. “This was where it all began for him.”

***

Sally Stallings

Sally Stallings was 26 when her father died after suffering a heart attack. He was only 73, but she speculates that the physical and emotional scars he carried from World War I — and which he frequently revisited for some of his most prominent works — finally caught up with him. She speaks wistfully when she recalls his death; there were still so many questions left to ask, still so much that she didn’t know about him. “There was a feeling of incompleteness,” she says today.

She knew that her father, a native of Georgia, enrolled at Wake Forest in 1912. He was a classics major and editor of the Old Gold and Black. On the ceiling of his boarding-house room, above his bed, he posted a sign, “A champion would get up.” That would define him for the rest of his life, Sally Stallings said.

She knew that it was at Wake Forest where he met his first wife, Helen Purefoy Poteat, the daughter of William Louis Poteat, president of Wake Forest from 1905 to 1927. They had two daughters, Diana Poteat Stallings Hobby and Sylvia Stallings Lowe. After their divorce in the mid-1930s, Stallings married Louise St. Leger Vance, the voice of Fox Movietone newsreels.

A letter Stallings wrote to Helen Poteat in 1916 on Old Gold and Black stationery. Historical images courtesy Special Collections and Archives, Z. Smith Reynolds Library.

Stallings joined the U.S. Marines in 1917 and was a “doughboy” in France in World War I. He received a Purple Heart after being severely injured while taking out a German machine gun position in the Battle of Belleau Wood in France; his right kneecap was blown away. (He would lose his right leg a few years later and eventually his other leg to an aneurysm.)

His 1925 autobiographical novel about his war experiences, “Plumes,” was later adapted into King Vidor’s film “The Big Parade.” His 1933 book, “The First World War — A Photographic History,” was regarded as one of the greatest pictorial histories of the war.

In the 1920s and ’30s, Stallings collaborated with some of the biggest names in Broadway and Hollywood. He wrote the acclaimed play “What Price Glory?” with Maxwell Anderson; adapted Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” for the stage; co-wrote the theatrical production “Rainbow” with Oscar Hammerstein; and co-wrote the screenplay for John Ford’s “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.”

Sally Stallings was most familiar with his last, and perhaps finest, work, ”The Doughboys: The Story of the AEF, 1917-1918,” published five years before his death. He drew upon his own experiences to tell the gripping stories of the one million troops of the American Expeditionary Forces that poured into France in the final year of the war to repel German forces.

***

Sally Stallings knew all those things about her father, but there was still something missing. When she finally opened the steamer trunks, she found it. Inside was a treasure trove of the many lives her father lived.

There were love letters and notes from her father to her mother. There was a photograph of her father with two legs; she had never seen him with two legs. She realized that her talents as a visual artist — she is a retired art teacher — came from her father’s visual writing style. The pieces of her father’s life began to fall into place.

She discovered piles of drafts and gallery proofs from “The Doughboys” with her father’s handwritten corrections in black and red ink. There were letters from World War I veterans and maps that he drew depicting World War I battles. She was 20 again; she helped proof “The Doughboys” while home from college one summer. “Who would have thought that I would ever see those pages again,” she said 45 years later.

She dug deeper into the trunks. There were movie scripts written on onion-skin paper, dozens of short stories, book proofs, letters and unpublished manuscripts, in blue and green folders and battered envelopes and spiral notebooks. She found a shooting schedule for 1942’s “The Jungle Book” and a first draft of his screenplay for 1954’s “The Sun Shines Bright.”

She found her favorite movie script, “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” written by her father in 1949. She was eight again, wearing a yellow dress and new patent leather shoes, clunking loudly down the aisle at the film’s premier at a Palm Springs theater. She recalls the film’s star, John Wayne, bouncing her on his knees at a party at her parent’s house in Pacific Palisades, Calif., and tossing his wine glass into the backyard gold fish pond.

Laurence Stallings, 1940

There were articles and stories on the war between Italy and Ethiopia that he covered with Fox Movietone news in the mid-1930s. There were letters and documents from his service in World War II, when he was recalled to the U.S. Marines and stationed in the Allied war room in London.

Sally Stallings knew there was no shoving the trunks back to the dark corners of her basement. She and her brother, Laurence Jr., have donated the collection to the Z. Smith Reynolds Library, where it will be available to historians and students. Wake Forest is the proper home for her father’s papers, she said. “I feel like they’re finally home.”

She spent a year going through the trunks and cataloging every scrap of paper. As she was boxing up the collection to send to the library, she made another discovery: there was already a Stallings collection in the library. In 2008, her half-sisters, Diana Poteat Stallings Hobby and Sylvia Stallings Lowe, had donated their own collection of their father’s works.

Sally Stallings donated her father's typewriter and pipe to the Wake Forest Historical Museum.

That collection largely includes papers and documents from the first half of Stallings’ life: letters from his first wife, Helen Poteat, and father-in-law, William Louis Poteat; correspondence from playwright Paul Green and authors Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner; and reviews of his earlier novels, films and plays.

Sally Stallings had never met — or even talked to — Hobby or Lowe, until she picked up the phone last fall and called Lowe, who lives in Alexandria, Va. Hobby and Lowe invited Stallings and her brother to meet them at the Poteat ancestral home, Forest Home, in Caswell County, North Carolina. Laurence Stallings lived there during his marriage to Helen Poteat and wrote many of his earliest works there.

Sally Stallings and her youngest son, Ronald, with a portrait of Laurence Stallings in the Z. Smith Reynolds Library.

Stallings and her brother also made their first trip to Wake Forest. They saw, for the first time, in the Z. Smith Reynolds Library a portrait of a young Laurence Stallings posing in the library at Forest Home. They also visited the Old Campus, where their father was a student 100 years ago.

Sally Stallings’ journey that had started in the darkest corner of her basement in Fresno, Calif., had ended across the country. “I gained a home for dad’s papers, gained knowledge and friendship of two half-sisters, and saw some of my dad’s roots here,” she said. “It’s closed some circles in my life.”

Jamie Campisano (’07) is on a mission. She wants to instill in children, beginning at a very young age, the importance of going to college. Her new children’s book, “ ‘C’ is for College,” introduces children to college from A (for academics and athletics) to Z (for showing zeal and enthusiasm for education).

A native of Louisville, Ky., Campisano earned certificates in broadcast journalism and documentary film from the New York Film Academy and works for Ridley Scott Associates, a film and commercial production company, in New York City.

What is your book about?

“ ‘C’ is for College” (Evanston Publishing: 2012) is an ABC kind of book that encourages children to see themselves as college material and helps to embed the idea that college is the normal progression after high school. The book familiarizes kids with a college vocabulary and helps give them confidence to know they are college worthy, college going, and college bound.

I am using the word “college” a little loosely. What the book stresses is post-secondary education. I think going into the trades is great and definitely needed — being a carpenter, a plumber, an electrician, etc. Those jobs also require some post-secondary schooling. Read more about ” ‘C’ is for college.”

Why did you write this book?

I became increasingly troubled about the education crisis and wanted to do something, however small, to help. I have always been a believer in the concept “the me I see, is the me I’ll be.” So, I decided to write a couple of children’s books, and my first one is “ ‘C’ is for College.” My books aren’t going to save any lives, but I am hoping they might save some livelihoods.

My book tries to send a clear message to our youth. You are going to need some post-secondary education and you are going to need to get a degree – a college degree, a trade certificate or something. We need encouragers for our youth at all levels. Kids aren’t born winners or losers, they are born choosers. We need to find ways to help them value and choose education.

I understand that you are donating some of the proceeds from your book to student aid at Wake Forest; why?

I think it is important to have diverse socio-economic students on campus. I had some friends at Wake who were on huge financial aid packages. We all grew personally and professionally being amongst the economic diversity. I appreciate what Wake did for me and want to give back.

There are a lot of professors who made a huge difference in shaping the person I have become, and I am forever grateful. Wake Forest offers an education that is up close and personal. I loved the small classes; they were all very lively with everyone engaged, lots of lively debate. I think that environment helped develop my ability to communicate effectively, my self-confidence in speaking out with a differing opinion, my creativity, so many things.

Attending Wake opened up the door to some great internships also. Everyone in the workplace respects the University. It has a fabulous brand. I interned at NBC, National Geographic and NPR. All of those wonderful opportunities were available in part because I attended Wake. I feel so very honored to call it my alma mater.

What is your next book about?

My next book is called “If you Educate a Mermaid…” . It speaks to all of the wonderful things that result from education. If you educate a mermaid, she will want to learn other languages, she will want to travel and see other oceans, she will never judge another fish by the color of his scales. All of the same things that hold true if you educate a child. I have always liked mermaids and thought it would be a fun book.

It was a Mickey Mouse prank that was one for the ages. Thirty-four years ago, in the early morning hours of April 20, 1978, a small group of students calling themselves the Mouseketeers placed a giant cardboard picture of Mickey Mouse over the face of the clock on Wait Chapel.

You have to look closely, but that's Mickey Mouse on the Chapel clock.

Why’d they do it? “Y? Because we like you!” one of the Mouseketeers told the Old Gold & Black. “See you real soon!” They just wanted to bring “some harmless humor to this dull campus,” another student told the OG&B.

None of the pranksters was ever publicly identified or punished. But after 34 years — and with assurances that his Wake Forest degree is safe — one of the merry mice is ready to come clean.

He’s not wearing a white short-sleeved turtleneck with MIKE printed on it, but Mike Toth (’79) was one of the proud Wake Forest Mouseketeers. He was the one brave enough, or crazy enough, to pull off the most daring part of the caper. He was the outside man on the “steeple assault team,” dangling from a rope 100 feet above the ground to affix the 10-foot high Mickey on the clock face.

“My biggest fear was not plunging from the roof to my death,” he said, “but not getting back inside and having to call the fire department” to rescue him. Hanging off the side of Wait Chapel at 2:30 in the morning was a sure ticket back home.

(The caper may have been a harbinger of what Toth has gone on to do. He’s worked for NASA, the Department of Defense, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service and the National Reconnaissance Office. For the last 10 years, he led a team that revealed, using advanced imaging techniques, the original text of the Archimedes Palimpsest. He describes the project in the fall 2011 Wake Forest Magazine. Most recently, he’s been involved in preserving and studying ancient manuscripts at a remote monastery in the Sinai desert. He’ll be back in Egypt in late April and early May to continue that work.)

A photo from the Winston-Salem Journal shows MIckey Mouse being removed from the Chapel clock.

Toth, a native of Florida, had actually worked at Disney World. But the idea started when a professor innocently related some college pranks to his students. (The professor was briefly under suspicion for “advising” the students, but he played no role in the mouse caper.)

Off went the students to plan their own prank. Wait Chapel was the obvious target, and students took it as a challenge to see if they could do it, Toth said. Plus, Toth’s father and grandfather had their own clock-decorating stories from their college days, so if he were caught, at least his dad would understand, he reasoned.

The operation was meticulously planned. This wasn’t some fraternity prank or spur-of-the-moment impulse after a night of partying. Toth, who had some climbing experience and gear, said the operation was dangerous but was carefully planned to be safe.

An advance team scouted the Wait Chapel tower. One student drew a scaled drawing of the front of the Chapel so they could figure out how large to make Mickey, while another student made and painted the Mickey Mouse cutout. Another secured keys to give the conspirators access through the locked doors up into the tower. They hid Mickey, ropes and other gear in the tower before the operation.

In case they were caught, they held an official looking — but highly implausible — letter on University stationery, supposedly signed by Pete Moore, then-director of the physical plant. The letter granted “employee(s) of Piedmont Hydrodynamics” permission to conduct “thermal inversion layer studies of the air mass … (and) the eddy currents around the steeple,” in preparation for the installation of the new carillon.

A scale drawing of Wait Chapel was used to determine Mickey's size.

On the night of the operation, one team of conspirators redirected the massive spotlights on Poteat Residence Hall away from Wait Chapel, to provide cover of darkness. As the steeple assault team — Toth, two other male students and one female student — crept up the stairs and ladders higher into the tower, they removed tape placed by the U.S. Secret Service to secure doors before President Jimmy Carter’s speech several weeks earlier.

One student removed a section of the louvered vents right above the clock face and lowered Mickey Mouse down into position. Toth climbed through a small trap door, clipped into a rope and made his way around to the front of the clock. The cutout was constructed to fit behind the clock hands, but when that didn’t work, Toth improvised and placed the cutout over the clock hands. The whole operation took about 30 minutes.

For Toth, getting out of the tower was easy; getting back in was the hard part. By the time he started climbing back toward the trap door, heavy dew had made the side of the chapel slippery. “The impressions of my fingernails are probably still there,” he says.

Excitement over pulling off the prank was somewhat dampened the next morning when University officials moved quickly to remove Mickey, before most students were even awake. The Mouseketeers cried foul, and they criticized the “Mickey Mouse attitudes” of the administration for removing the “detailed masterpiece of intended humor and social comment,” one of the students wrote to the Old Gold & Black.

Winston-Salem Journal article on the Mickey Mouse caper.

A few students, but not Toth, were questioned about the prank. One campus police officer told the Winston-Salem Journal that criminal charges could be filed against the students. But another officer told the paper he thought the prank was funny.

President James Ralph Scales graciously accepted one student’s story that the prank was not done maliciously. “As I understand it, a student has offered to pay for any damage, and if it was just clowning around, then I would think that would suffice,” he told the newspaper.

Students collected $80 to repair the clock, even though they insisted that the Mouseketeers hadn’t damaged it; they claimed it was workers removing Mickey who caused the damage.

The Mouseketeers had a modest goal for the prank, Toth says. It wasn’t to protest social policy or the N.C. Baptist State Convention’s control of Wake Forest or to make any kind of political statement. It was just meant to bring a little joy to the campus in the weeks leading up to final exams.

If you’re the parent of a student who will be entering grades five through eight next year, you know summer break is just around the corner.

If your student is interested in creative writing, he or she may enjoy the Great American Writers’ Camp, to be held on-campus at Wake Forest July 9-14. The one-week day day camp gives local students the chance to let their imagination run wild while learning and practicing the art of writing.

With a focus on creativity, students learn new ways to express themselves and their ideas. Camp activities are tailored to be fun (it is a summer camp after all) so students don’t ever feel like they are doing school work. In addition, writing projects are in balanced with field trips and guest speakers so the young writers can see and learn about the many places writing can take them outside the classroom.

The Great American Writers’ Camp, LLC was established in 2011 by Catherine Coelho (’10, MA ’12) and is the culmination of several years’ worth of creative-learning ideas. The program is supported by the Department of Communication and was established with a grant from the Center for Innovation, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship.

For more information and to register visit the website.

Chances are your first and lasting memories of Wake Forest are associated with its trees. They captivated you on your first campus visit and embraced you with a sentimental adieu as you said your final good-bye.

More than likely you exuberantly hurled many a roll of toilet paper into the Quad trees. Perhaps you studied under a towering willow oak, got engaged under a fragrant magnolia, or honored a classmate’s memory by planting a healing dogwood.

The Wake Forest mystique wafts gently among the branches of its magnificent family of trees. Their status is exalted in our very name. Connecting past and future, they remain “constant and true,” celebrating with us in good times — comforting us in sad times — always offering peace, security, joy and renewal. They make a claim upon our hearts because of that subtle something, described in the words of Robert Louis Stevenson, “that quality of air that emanates from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.”

“Our trees are our most valuable asset,” says Jim Coffey, director of landscaping services. “You can build a building in two years but you can’t build a tree.”

Beginning with an initial planting in the mid-’50s that included elms, dogwoods, magnolias and pin oaks (many still standing along the stately “Avenue of Oaks” encircling campus), some 2,400 trees have been added since 1993. The Quad trees on Hearn Plaza are in their third replanting since 1987. First the Dutch elms, then the Autumn Purple ashes, succumbed to disease. The transition to October Glory red maples began in 2008. “There are 24 different cultivars,” says Coffey. “Their colors will be stunning in the fall.”

Coffey, along with arborist Jim Mussetter, oversees maintenance and preservation of a “safe, attractive, healthy and sustainable campus arboretum.” Their team’s work will be recognized on April 20 when the Arbor Day Foundation bestows upon the University a Tree Campus USA designation.

To earn the honor Wake Forest achieved five core standards for sustainable campus forestry: establishment of a tree advisory committee, development of a Tree Endowment Fund to replenish any forest impacted by construction or natural disaster, an Arbor Day observance and the sponsorship of student service-learning projects. The fifth criterion is a tree-care plan.

Given that plan’s guidelines, dendrophiles might dispel the romantic notion of reading poetry under a Chinese Elm — it’s on the list of prohibited trees along with sweet gums and Leyland Cypress, to name a few.

The plan protects and preserves heritage trees — those that have exceptional historical, cultural, or aesthetic value because of their age, descent, legendary stature, contribution to the diversity of the landscape, exemplary representation of genus or species, rarity, or association with an important event or person.

Perhaps the most-recognized heritage trees are the Southern Magnolias on Manchester Plaza, or the Mag Quad. According to Coffey’s research, Walter Raphael Wiley and his wife, Monnie Louise McDaniel Wiley, learned of the impending move to Winston-Salem while visiting the Old Campus in 1947. Mrs. Wiley wanted to establish a symbolic bridge between the old and new campuses. An avid gardener, she had her nephew, Robert Earl Williford (’51), collect seeds from the magnolia trees on the old campus. Williford enlisted the aid of Dr. Budd Smith, professor of biology, and the seeds were mailed to the Wileys in Chesterfield, S.C., where Mrs. Wiley planted them in a filled-in swimming pool.

In 1956, when construction of the college buildings in Winston-Salem was underway, the magnolia trees in Chesterfield were about 5 feet tall. The administration graciously accepted Mrs. Wiley’s offer to donate the trees. She and her son, Walter R. Wiley, Jr., balled the trees, put them in the back of a large station wagon and delivered approximately 20 to the nursery/landscaping department. They were planted a week later.

The plan covers more than 20 memory trees that pay tribute to faculty, students and friends. They are planted in meaningful locations around campus such as outside Tribble Hall, where the late Professor of History David Smiley is honored with a Zelkova. He undoubtedly would have picked up any trash found underneath its branches.

Coffey and his team expect each of us who loves Wake Forest’s trees to take responsibility for their care and preservation by respecting a few ground rules. Trees don’t take favorably to signs, banners or hammocks poked into their trunks. And we should find other spots to leash Spot.

Happily, though, there is no rule against rolling the Quad. “People can harm the trees, but the toilet tissue can’t,” says Coffey. “It’s a tradition.”

A tradition for generations to come, just like the trees of Wake Forest.

The sounds of war – incoming mortar rounds and rockets – were never far away from the makeshift courtrooms of Federal Judge Frank Whitney (’82).

For seven months last year, he served as a military judge in some of the most dangerous parts of the Middle East. Under his traditional black judicial robe, he carried a 9 mm pistol in a hip holster. Venturing outside the relative safety of U.S. bases meant “gearing up” in body armor and travelling by armored vehicle.

A reservist in the U.S. Army, Whitney, 52, was deployed last June to preside over courts-martial of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. Safely back home now in Charlotte, N.C., he remains grateful to the young soldiers he saw risking their lives.

“The credit should go to the 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds who are over there in harm’s way,” says Whitney, who has served as a U.S. District Court judge for the Western District of North Carolina in Charlotte since 2006. “I saw another side of that age bracket, and they inspired me. Our country has a great future with those men and women.”

His service in Iraq and Afghanistan was unprecedented. Fred Borch, the historian for the U.S. Army JAG Corps, told The Charlotte Observer that Whitney was the first federal judge to become a military judge and preside over courts-martial in a combat theater. He also made history by presiding over the last court-martial in Iraq before the U.S. troop withdrawal last December.

Whitney’s journey to the Middle East began at Wake Forest more than 30 years ago. His father and grandfather served in the Army, and he continued the family tradition when he signed up for Army ROTC. He was commissioned in the Army Reserves on May 17, 1982, the day he graduated from Wake Forest.

Courses taught by professors such as David Broyles in politics, David Smiley in history, Robert Helm (’39) in philosophy and William Angell (’41) in religion paid off in the desert. Studying Mesopotamia, ancient Babylon and even Hammurabi’s Code — a Babylonian law code on everything from contracts to family disputes — prepared him for “this incredible region of the world,” says Whitney, who was a history major. His brother, Grant, graduated from Wake Forest in 1976 and from the School of Law in 1979.

The desire to serve his country kept Whitney in the Army Reserves as he earned his MBA and JD from the University of North Carolina and as he moved up the legal profession ladder — from an assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, to U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina in Raleigh, to federal judge.

As a reservist, he’s served in more than 25 countries including Bahrain, Georgia, Germany, Italy, Indonesia, Japan and South Africa. But his tour in Iraq was his most challenging. He was based in Kuwait, but spent most of his time in Iraq and Afghanistan. He typically worked 14-hour days, seven days a week. There’s no time off in a combat zone, he notes.

He presided over 25 courts-martial for soldiers facing charges ranging from alcohol and drug possession to rape and robbery, as well as crimes unique to the military, such as disrespect to a senior officer or absent without leave. He held court in hardened buildings on U.S. bases, including Baghdad’s Green Zone. When mortar rounds and rockets interrupted court proceedings, he would hit the ground and then run to the nearest bunker.

“I never had a real deep fear for my life or serious injury,” he says. “But it was real. Many times I had to recess court because we heard incoming rounds. It was random and unpredictable. I didn’t have the same fear for my life that the real heroes did, the young men and women going outside the wire every day.”

The most difficult part of the experience was not seeing his family — wife, Catherine, and daughters Annie, 15, and Hunter, 14 — for seven months, other than a one-week vacation in Paris.

In late November, he conducted the last military trial in Iraq before the U.S. troop withdrawal was completed in mid-December. As troops were shutting down the base around him, he presided over a 16-hour trial in a temporary courtroom in southern Iraq for a soldier charged with disrespect to senior officers. After concluding the trial a few minutes before midnight the day before Thanksgiving, he boarded a C130 at 4 a.m. Thanksgiving Day for a flight to Kuwait, his first stop on the long journey back home.

The deployment to the Middle East was his last; he’s retiring this summer as a colonel after serving the maximum 30 years in the Reserves. He has a new appreciation for life in the United States and the judicial system after his experience in the Middle East. “I think I’m a much better judge for having that experience.”